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Changing Your Employee Onboarding Plan
By Norma Dávila, Wanda Piña-Ramírez
The right onboarding experience is a determining factor in how employees establish that important connection with the business. This experience, in turn, strongly influences an employee's decision to stay in the company or seek a career opportunity elsewhere.
Employee onboarding is more than an orientation about the company and the rules employees must follow in the workplace. It is more than an event. Employee onboarding is a process that begins during recruitment, extends through the hiring process, evolves as employees change roles, and ends when they leave the company.
What is your company doing to onboard its employees?
Let's see whose story resonates more with you. Let's meet Francis, Angela, and Ted.
Francis accepted a position as an administrative assistant for a telecommunications company. He completed the required paperwork online and took multiple webinars about the company's history, its vision, its mission, and its plans for the future. Other topics included scenarios designed to bring to life the employee handbook as well as the company's code of ethics.
When Francis arrived at the company, the receptionist did not know who was expecting him. After making some calls while Francis waited in the lobby, she found out that HR believed they had completed their share of the process and handed it over to the learning and development team to do theirs. While the receptionist was calling L&D, Francis's new supervisor came into the lobby and ushered him away to her office.
Francis had been looking forward to that first day of work. However, the confusion around his arrival and the company's apparent lack of organization to establish clear connections between the online onboarding and the reality of the workplace was not what he had expected. He had second thoughts about having accepted the offer.
Angela is a recent engineering graduate who accepted an entry-level position at a construction firm. When she arrived for her first day of work, she was sent to a conference room where new hires received two days of presentations from senior engineers about the company, its history, and its most important projects. HR representatives discussed company policies and ensured that the new hires completed all the required paperwork. They were directed to a call center if they had questions.
Angela then reported at the construction site of a mini-mall for two days of shadowing her boss so that she could learn what to do. Her boss left for a three-day vacation after those two days and did not ask anyone to support Angela in his absence. Claire, another engineer, met Angela while both were buying coffee at a nearby bakery. Claire noticed that Angela's hard hat had the company's logo and introduced herself. Claire became Angela's informal mentor during those crucial first days.
Ted's background in chemistry made him an ideal candidate for the role of laboratory analyst at a new specialized testing facility for an emerging industry. His interviewers gave him a realistic job preview of the position and explained his responsibilities in great detail. They answered his questions about the company's expectations for the position and were available to clarify other issues at a later time.
Because Ted values an environment where he can feel comfortable asking questions and where he can trust that he will receive guidance and direction to succeed, he accepted the offer. Soon after doing so, he received documents to review and sign, as well as access to a company website where he could learn more about the organization and the emerging industry that it is beginning to serve before his first day of work.
Ted participated in a three-day general orientation program that introduced him to the company's culture beyond what he had learned on his own. On the fourth day, his supervisor shared with Ted the individualized role-specific onboarding plan designed to support him into becoming a productive contributor to the business.
The stories of Francis, Angela, and Ted illustrate the experiences of new employees in many companies and what happens as a result of those experiences. Francis's company implemented an entirely online program and did not pay attention to how human contact is necessary for a new employee to integrate into the organization. Angela's company misconstrued orientation for onboarding, disregarded the information overload for the new hires, and underestimated the need for guidance and support on the job. Meanwhile, Ted's company paid attention to every detail during the recruitment and hiring processes for him to understand the business as well as later when he reported to his area for him to understand his role. Thus, Ted's experience offers a snapshot of a well-designed onboarding plan.
Uncertainty about onboarding is not new. Yet all of us know that onboarding is key for employee engagement and retention. We recommend that you start by defining what onboarding is for you, for your company, and for your stakeholders before doing anything else.
Is your company's onboarding more like Francis's or Angela's? If so, it's time to change the plan.
For more advice, check out Effective Onboarding.
Norma Dávila
Norma Dávila is a certified career development strategist who guides clients through targeted introspection and self-assessments to identify strengths and interests before embarking on career changes. Her approach to career coaching positions her clients to gain the self-confidence to present themselves as the best candidate during job interviews. Norma, a certified resume writer by PARW/CC, adapts her advice to best suit client professional experience and aspirations. A firm believer in the value of networks, she steers them to optimize every personal or virtual opportunity to connect with others. A natural talent developer, Norma focuses her practice on entry-level and midcareer professionals across the entire employee life cycle, and has supported employees from industries including banking, technology, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, medical devices, dairy products, aerospace manufacturing, retail sales, risk management, automotive sales, energy, waste management, and funeral services. She is recognized for communicating complex ideas in easy-to-understand terms to all audiences and introducing concrete examples to which they can relate. Norma specializes in designing and delivering learning experiences that lay the groundwork to acquire and strengthen competencies and skills on topics such as team development, business writing, customer service, performance management, employee communications, and transition management. She is a Society for Human Resource Management Senior Certified Professional, and has a bachelor's degree in psychology from Yale University and master's and doctoral degrees in psychology from the University of Chicago.
Norma is a partner in the Human Factor Consulting Group, senior consultant for AON, and subject matter expert, program facilitator, and program translator for SHRM specializing in Latin America. This Certified DDI Facilitator is field editor for ATD Links and co-author with Wanda Piña-Ramírez of Effective Onboarding (ATD Press, 2018), Cutting Through the Noise: The Right Employee Engagement Strategies for You (ASTD Press, 2013) and Passing the Torch: A Guide to the Succession Planning Process (ATD Press, 2015) as well as of articles in TD, T&D, The Public Manager, and multiple blogs. She has presented at ATD's International Conference & Exposition, SHRM's Talent Management Conference, SHRM's Conference Preview Workshops, ATD's México Summit, and Ellevate, among others.
Wanda Piña-Ramírez
Wanda Piña-Ramírez is an action-driven, strategic management and executive consultant with a proven track record of contributing to the bottom line in companies spanning from multinational corporations to small businesses located in Puerto Rico, the continental United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Her innovative, energetic, and open-minded consulting style is an asset when dealing with ambiguity and challenging business situations. As the longest-serving member of AON Puerto Rico's Mejores Patronos (Best Employers) Committee, she has firsthand knowledge of industries as diverse as restaurants, insurance, medical laboratories, pharmaceuticals, hospitality, professional associations, hospitals, banking, pharmacy information systems, general information processing, refrigeration, medical devices, and building materials. Wanda is certified as a coach from the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras, as a practitioner in neurolinguistic programming and applied kinesiology by the International NLP Trainers Association, as a human resources administrator by the Escuela Avanzada de Administración de Recursos Humanos y Legislación Laboral de Puerto Rico, and as a legal intercessor for cases of domestic violence and aggression in Puerto Rico. She is a frequent guest on radio and television programs, where she brings together the legal and business components of talent development and human resources management, tackling such topics as business metrics, labor law, sexual harassment, and domestic violence. Wanda also contributes her expert opinion on the latest issues affecting today's workforce to news outlets and other forums such as professional associations, business groups, and nonprofit organizations.
Wanda is a partner in the Human Factor Consulting Group, senior consultant for AON, and subject matter expert, program facilitator, and program translator for SHRM specializing in Latin America. This Certified DDI Facilitator is field editor for ATD Links and co-author with Norma Dávila of Effective Onboarding (ATD Press, 2018), Cutting Through the Noise: The Right Employee Engagement Strategies for You (ASTD Press, 2013) and Passing the Torch: A Guide to the Succession Planning Process (ATD Press, 2015), as well as of articles in TD, T&D, The Public Manager, and multiple blogs. She has presented at ATD's International Conference & Exposition, SHRM's Talent Management Conference, SHRM's Conference Preview Workshops, ATD's México Summit, and Ellevate, among others.
Daniel Staten
Orientation and onboarding are confused too often. Onboarding may take some time depending on the role and orientation plays a key part. These examples were really helpful. I'm going to share them with my team!


The hole is out in the middle of the desert.
It's not a hole in the ground, really. It's more of a chasm in the nature of things. It's a place where the underlying mathematics of the world break down, defaulting to prehuman axioms.
There's a man standing above the hole. He's in shadow. He's got a long coat and a cigarette, and in between pulls he holds it out and burning sparks drift down in the wind above the hole.
And there are great horrible eyes that look up unblinkingly at him, only to be burned.
And there are fins that splash back beneath the surface of the Not as the sparks touch them.
And there are places where a single ash in the wind lands and gives birth to a world, seethes into brilliant life, planets, suns, spinning galaxies, and ships; and then the whole curls in on itself as it cools and dies and fades into the Not.
And sparks flutter down and lightly burn the hand.
It's a real town, you know.
But the man up at the top doesn't react. He just takes another pull and waits. Now and again, when a tendril of the darkness rises, he steps on it.
Then the man's assistants, a man and a woman, arrive with the patch, and they place it over the hole, and all is still.
Is this a parable about software engineering?
If so, I must be from Kenmore.
I used to work round the corner from Kenmore during my holidays at University. I can confirm that it is a real town and has a very nice pub in it; in which I have spent many plesent, if sureal, evenings in.


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Watch for new True Crime Books and DVDs!
Goldberg/Peterson
Melissa Drexler
Andrea Yates
Marie Noe
Diane Downs
Jeffrey R. MacDonald
On September 11, 2011, Lindsey Brooke Lowe, 25, gave birth to twins on a toilet in her parents' home. She smothered them both and lef their bodies in in her bedroom laundry hamper.
Why Parents Kill Their Children -- 1) The mother who plans to take her own life and believes that the children are better off with her 2) the parent is acutely psychotic; 3) fatal battering; 4) to get rid of an unwanted baby; 5) spousal revenge.
Parents Who Slay Their Children -- A father turned his home into a gas chamber, killing 5 children. A former nurse drowns 5 children in the bathtub. Since the myth of Medea, who murdered her children after her lover deserted her, filicide is society's most aberrant act.
Children with chronic health conditions are 88% more likely to suffer physical abuse than healthy children, according to research in the March issue of Acta Paediatrica. They are also 154% more likely to suffer a combination of physical abuse and exposure to intimate partner violence than their healthy school friends.
Julie Schenecker, 50, of Tampa Palms, FL was sick of her teenage children talking back to her, so she bought a .38-caliber pistol and planned their murder and her suicide. She shot her 13-year-old son after driving him home from soccer practice. Then shot her 16-year-old daughter in the back of the head as she did homework. Julie's husband, children's father, Army Col. Parker Schenecker, is stationed at Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base. He had been in the Middle East. Several weeks later her husband, the children's father, met with her for the first time in jail to tell her he was seeking a divorce.
Father Claims He Killed Missing Swiss girls -- Matthias Schepp, 43, father of missing Swiss twins sent a letter to his wife saying he killed 6 year-old Alessia and Livia Schepp before committing suicide. He studied suicide techniques, poisons and ferry schedules before taking the twins from their home in western Switzerland on January 30. Schepp killed himself by stepping in front of a train on February 3.
Emily (Jane) and Nancy (Jean) Hopkins were fraternal twins. Emily received an MBA from Harvard and became a chemical engineer.Nancy joined a national brokerage firm and was active in Dallas social circles. Relatives noticed signs of mental illness in the twins. When Nancy was pregnant she tried to kill her two young sons and herself with a drug overdose. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Emily fatally stabbed her 9-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter and then killed herself.
Shortly before Christmas 2001, Christian Longo murdered his wife, MaryJane Longo, and their 3 children, Zachary, Sadie Ann, and Madison. He then stuffed their bodies into luggage and pillowcases and dumped their bodies into Oregon's Pacific Coast. He was captured living in a grass hut at a beach resort in Tulúm Mexico. He received the death penalty which was upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court. Book: Love, Daddy: The True Story of Accused Con Man and Family Killer Christian Longo
Darin and Darlie Routier's two young sons were attacked in the middle of the night. Darlie was badly wounded. But the police said her story just didn't add up. Is Darlie Routier falsely accused or a murderer?
Book: Hush Little Babies: The True Story Of A Mother Who Murdered Her Own Children
Deanna Laney -- A mother stones her two sons to death, and critically injures another, claiming God told her to do it. A jury found her not guilty of murder by reason of insanity. Psychiatrist Park Dietz concluded she did not know right from wrong.
Is Garrett Wilson a loving father In 1987, Wilson's 5 month-old son, Garrett Michael, died. Missy Anastasi, Wilson's wife, suspected foul play. A medical examiner ruled he died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Seven years later, Anastasi discovered Wilson secretly divorced her to marry another woman, and had another child. She asked police to look into her son's death. What they found shocked them. Can police gather enough evidence? Read Chapter 1 of Adrian Havill's gripping examination of the Garrett Wilson case.
Theresa Cross Knorr -- Theresa Knorr and her five children lived in Sacramento.She was-insanely jealous of her beautiful daughters. She drugged, handcuffed and shot Suesan, her 16-year-old daughter, left her to suffer and then had her two sons burn her alive. Theresa beat 20-year-old Sheila severely and locked her in a closet until she starved to death. Her brothers dumped her body near where they had cremated Suesan. It took her daughter Terry five years to convince authorities to investigate. Theresa pled guilty to 2 counts of murder in exchange for her sons, victims of child abuse, not being prosecuted. Book: Whatever Mother Says...: A True Story of a Mother, Madness and Murder.
October 25, 1994, in Union, South Carolina, Susan Smith drowned her sons, Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months, in John D. Long Lake. She reported a black man stole her car with her children. A week later, Smith confessed she had drowned them by driving into a lake. The defense's sentencing phase of the trial focused on her past. While serving her life sentence Smith admitted to sex with a prison guard. Susan placed an online personal ad seeking not judgmental pen pals who want to write to a "sensitive, caring, and kind-hearted" convicted murderer who loves "rainbows, Mickey Mouse, the beach, the mountains, and waterfalls." She adds, "I have grown and matured alot since my incarceration, but I will always hurt for the pain I've caused so many, especially my children." South Carolina v. Susan V. Smith. Books: Susan Smith: Victim or Murderer by George RekersMy Daughter Susan Smith by Linda Russell
Debra Jean Milke, on death row in Arizona after being convicted the murder of her 4-year-old son. Prosecutors say Milke had him killed because he was an "inconvenience." Milke claims her conviction hinges on the unsupported word of one police officer and the vengeful testimony of embittered family members. A Mother's Story of Murder (American Justice) [VHS]
Marie Noe, 70 was arrested at her Philadelphia home and charged with smothering 8 of her young children, 30 years after the last death.
Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson - 20, were sentenced in Wilmington, Del., to a couple years in prison after the college students and former high-school sweethearts pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of their newborn son in a motel in 1996.
Dr. Jeffrey R. MacDonald -- The Princeton-educated Army surgeon is in prison for the murder of his wife and 2 young daughters.
Diane Downs is convicted of the shooting of her own 3 young children.
Bradley was conceived out of rape. Sheryl Hardy, 33, met Thomas Coe living in a truck. After they abandoned her 4 month old son, Bradley, at a mall, he was placed in foster care. They married Coe and had a daughter. Bradley's foster parents wanted to adopt him, but Hardy fought and won custody. In 1989, Sheryl watched as her husband shoved Bradley's head into the toilet like a plunger and beat him with couch cushions. Bradley died the next day, 66 days after he was returned to his biological mother he was dead. Coe was responsible for the worst abuses but mother cleaned him with a garden hose, shook him violently and ran a fork of feces over his mouth. Coe is serving a life sentence for 1st degree murder. Their daughter and a second girl born in prison were placed for adoption. Hardy has no contact with them. After Hardy served 9 years she moved to her hometown where an Illinois judge awarded her custody of her 9-month-old son.
Melissa Drexler - "The Prom Mom" arrived at her senior prom, gave birth to a 6 lb, 6 oz son, baby boy, strangled him to death, threw him in the garbage, and returned to the prom where she ate and requested the Metallica song "Unforgiven" to be played for her boyfriend. She plead guilty to aggravated manslaughter.
Marco Barrera Sentenced to death for killing his daughter, "Lupita" Esquivel, 2; and a son, Ernesto Esquivel, 5. The victims' mother, Petra Ricardo, 38, pleaded " no contest" to child endangerment and agreed to testify against her husband and sister, Maria Ricardo, 31. Barrera had 8 children, including the victims, with Petra Ricardo, had 6 more with her sister, Maria. Thirteen children, including the victims, lived with Maria and Barrera in a converted garage.
Andrea Yates, 36, Texas - Suffering from postpartum depression since the birth of her 2-year-old, she drowned her 5 children, ranging in age, from 6 months to 7 years. Child Protection Services had investigated the family after Andrea's suicide attempt two years before believed the children were being cared for properly.
Christina Marie Fiske, 22, a former Western Carolina University student plead guilty to killing her 6.5 pound newborn baby baby girl. Fiske admitted killing her shortly after birth and bagging her with her trash.
Forced prenatal care - Rebecca Corneau may be a religious extremist whose gross negligence allowed her baby to die. Corneau and her husband are members of a religious sect that calls itself a "sovereign nation." The group from 3 interrelated families, adheres to what they interpret as the tenets of the Old Testament. They home school their 13 children, and believe conventional medicine, is blasphemous.
Kirk Douglas Billie, 32, Miccosukee Indian, is accused of killing his two young sons. Prosecutors say Billie, drowned his sons in an act of vengeance against his girlfriend. The Miccosukee tribe settled with Billie, after an apology and they asked prosecutors to leave it at that. The 2nd-degree murder verdict means he could receive 15 years in prison for each count.
Ora Armenthia Prince - formerly known as Ora Lewis, was sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to killing her son, Willie Brookshire Jr., 10, in 1993 and leaving his body in the closet of a homeless shelter.
Socorro "Cora" Caro, 42, Nov. 22, 1999 after a fight with her husband, Xavier Caro, 52, a Northridge physician, killed her sleeping children , Joey, 11, Michael, 8 and Christopher, 5 with a .38 caliber handgun. Caro shot herself in the head but survived. An infant, was unharmed. Xavier arrived home to the bodies of his 3 children and wounded wife. Socorro who originally contended her husband killed her children, and shot her. pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Father whose wife killed 5 kids in 1965 -- Nov. 22, 1965, Maggie Young, a 38-year-old mother of 7 drowned her 5 youngest children in a bathtub. Her husband, James Young, an Air Force captain, had been away on a flying mission.
Marybeth Tinning
Books On Child Abuse
True Crime Article
Infanticide - Marie Noe
Infanticide: Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Before bringing a Malamute into your family please do some research and carefully evaluate the breed's characteristics to decide if they are the right dog for you. Malamutes are beautiful dogs, however under that stunning exterior lies the heart and soul of an working sled dog. This breed developed in the harsh reality of an arctic environment and some of the survival characteristics which allowed Malamutes to thrive under those circumstances can prove challenging to live with in modern day society. As with any breed of dog there is a range of personalities in Malamutes, however a number of characteristics are an intrinsic part of the breed and are present to one extent or another in almost all individuals.
This characterization remains one of the best and truest statements ever made about Alaskan Malamutes. Written in 1914 by Hudson Stuck, this quote describes the Malamutes he ran in harness during the early 1900's throughout Alaska. It is important that anyone considering adding a Malamute to their life embrace this statement and truly develop an understanding of its meaning.
Malamutes firmly believe that they and they alone are the center of the universe and everything else revolves around their wants and needs. A Malamute is always going to want to be wherever the "action" is, which usually means right by their owners side and in the middle of all family activities. They have big boisterous personalities, wicked senses of humor, keen intelligence, and opinions that are very much their own. They do not live to serve their owners, and sharing your life with a Malamute is a partnership where there is an open exchange of ideas. Malamutes can be very pushy, and given an inch they will take a mile and then some.
This makes owning and training a Malamute a very different experience than working with a breed who actually cares what you think and that will make some effort to do as you wish just because you ask them to. For most Malamutes it's all about "what's in it for me". Though their intelligence and problem solving abilities make them easy to teach, Malamutes are easily bored, will often become inventive if asked to do something repeatedly, and are renown for their acts of "creative disobedience". Malamutes can never be trusted off leash in an unfenced area because, though they may know they are supposed to come when they are called, they are just as likely to make the decision not to do so.
The Malamute's sheer physical strength and size as well as their independent attitude makes them extremely difficult to manage unless some time and energy is put into teaching them good manners and basic obedience. It is the responsibility of their owner to provide them with the training and guidance necessary to become canine good citizens. Through training their energy can be directed, and while this breed never becomes slavishly obedient, the partnership that develops while training your Malamute becomes an incredibly strong bond. Basic obedience training leads to a Malamute who is a pleasure to live with.
Developing in a nomadic culture where only the most personal of property was truly considered private, there was little need for Malamutes to be protective or develop territorial instincts. It is likely that a dog who showed any aggression towards humans would have been considered a liability and of more use as a fur coat than as a sled dog.
Malamutes love people - all people. To most Malamutes there is no such thing as a stranger, but instead just a new best friend they haven't met yet. These are friendly, outgoing, extroverted dogs who enjoy physical affection and who will happily crawl into a guests lap to both give and receive attention. Though their size and general appearance may give a stranger pause for thought, Malamutes can not be counted on to guard property or protect your person. They are, in fact, far more likely to invite a stranger in and show them where the cookie jar is located.
Malamutes tend to be very intolerant of pushy or rude behavior from other dogs. While they aren't usually actively looking to start fights, Malamutes will finish them without any hesitancy. They will not back down when challenged or threatened, and most of the time they won't exhibit the ritualistic signals many other dogs use to avoid physical confrontation. This is not a breed that is a good candidate for visiting dog parks or for the owner who expects their dog to participate in unsupervised or casual interaction with strange dogs.
be prepared for the possibility that it will not work out, and have a plan in place should it be necessary to physically separate the dogs for life.
Malamutes are a high prey drive breed and the instinct to catch and kill anything that acts like prey is still very strong. Cats, rabbits, other small pets, livestock, and even sometimes small dogs all behave and are perceived as prey animals to most Malamutes. It is normal and expected that Malamutes will be attracted to these kinds of animals, and will chase and kill them given the opportunity. While sometimes Malamutes can be conditioned to live peacefully in a home with a cat, particularly if raised with one, that does not mean they won't kill the neighbors cat when it runs across the yard. They should never be trusted with other small pets, and getting loose in a rural area is often a death sentence for a Malamute because they are drawn to and will kill livestock.
Malamutes require a remarkably small quantity of food for a dog their size. Though their food requirements are small, they are bottomless pits as far as what and how much they will eat. Anything that has any possible food value (and some things that don't) will be happily eaten by most Malamutes. Things like leather gloves, shoes, socks, and underwear are all fair game.
they know full well that you do not approve of their actions. The best way to correct this kind of problem is to roll up a newspaper and hit yourself over the head with it while repeating "I will not leave things where my Malamute can get them".
ride, or pretty much anything else that combines either physical or mental effort and spending time with their owner.
Working dogs are happy dogs, and tired dogs are good dogs. Malamutes who are not provided with a job to do will find one of their own. Most likely it is not going to be a job their owner approves of. Malamutes are master re-decorators and can rip through couches, drywall, carpet, and other flooring with amazing speed. They can turn a landscaped yard into a re-creation of the moon, and can dig malamute size craters with ease. Malamutes are extremely social creatures. They need to be an active part of the family "pack", and often become extremely destructive or vocal if isolated and ignored with little human companionship. This is not a breed that can be put out in the back yard and expected to entertain themselves on an ongoing basis.
Malamutes are designed to survive in brutally cold temperatures. In order to protect them from the cold their coats consist of a soft, fuzzy layer of undercoat designed to insulate which is protected by a course waterproof guard coat. Though not long, the coat is very dense.
For a good part of the year Malamutes have low maintenance and easy to maintain coats. Weekly brushing and the occasional bath keep them looking presentable, and they rarely if ever smell "doggy".
Twice a year, however, Malamutes provide their own snowstorm by "blowing" their coat. The entire coat cycles out while new coat grows in and the resulting volume of hair is truly amazing. You can bathe and brush and brush and brush the dog, vacuum the house, and 10 minutes later there will be a trail of hair. Anyone visiting in black pants will go home looking like they have been attacked by a Christmas tree flocking machine, and there is usually so much fuzzy undercoat floating around that Malamute owners often joke that dog hair is a condiment or a food group.
So in answer to the question….Yes Malamutes DO shed. Not all the time but whey they do they attack the problem like they do everything else. In a BIG way. And there's no way around it – Malamute owners just bide their time and wait for the resulting storm to pass, pushing their vacuum cleaners to maximum capacity while collecting what usually seems like enough hair to make a dozen or so new dogs in the process.
puppy into a member of the family who is a pleasure to be around. For this reason many Malamutes end up in rescue looking for new homes, or worse they end their days at an animal shelter. This is not the breed for a timid individual, nor is it a good choice for those who feel a dog must be physically dominated or who expect absolute devotion and obedience. If any of what is written above made you cringe, or if you at any point thought "I'll just teach my dog not to do that", please consider that a Malamute is probably not the breed for you.
Remember, these are characteristics inherent in the breed and part of what makes them what they are.
On the other hand, if you are drawn to the idea of adding a family member rather than a "pet" to your life, and if a dog with a "big" personality, great deal of intelligence, and love for physical activity would fit well into your home and lifestyle, the Alaskan Malamute might be a good breed for you. This breed by their very nature are challenging to live with, and many successful Malamute owners find that embracing that challenge is a major part of the enjoyment they get out of sharing life with another species.
An ideal Malamute owner leads an active lifestyle and is willing to make their dog a part of their everyday activities. They enjoy the challenge of training a dog who thinks for itself and works "with" rather than "for" them. They also have the physical and mental constitution to insist on proper behavior in a firm manner without being confrontational, and can laugh at themselves when their dog makes them look like a fool.


Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/12/2018 -- SMBG or self-monitoring blood glucose involves self-testing of blood glucose levels by people with diabetes any time anywhere. Self-monitoring is an important component of diabetes control therapy, recommended for individuals with diabetes to help achieve specific levels of glycemic control and prevent hypoglycemia. Through SMBG, an individual is able to collect comprehensive data about his blood glucose levels at different points of time in order to maintain constant blood glucose levels. SMBG can help in enabling proper control of diabetes by facilitating development of customized blood glucose profile of the individual which can help the health care professional develop individualized diabetic regimen. It also gives the diabetic patient the ability to undertake proper diet and physical activity choices on daily basis. Additionally, it improves the individual's recognition of hypoglycemia and enhances and empowers the effects of pharmaceutical and lifestyle intervention on glycemic control.
Rise in number of patients with diabetes globally is a prominent factor driving the growth of the global self-monitoring blood glucose market. According to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), the global diabetic population reached 424 million in 2017 from 414 million in 2015, and it is expected to swell further to reach 629 million by 2045. Diabetes is a leading cause of deaths globally, with around 1.6 million deaths reported in 2015. Rise in number of individuals with prediabetes, a serious health condition which often leads to type 2 diabetes, and other significant health conditions such as heart attack, blindness, or stroke is also contributing to the growing burden of the disease.
Initiatives taken by industry players and government and non-government organizations to create awareness about the rising epidemic of diabetes are also expected to contribute to the growth of the market. In July 2017, the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the American Medical Association (AMA) partnered with Ad Council to launch the national public service advertising (PSA) campaign aimed at creating awareness among millions of Americans who run the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The aim of these programs and initiatives is to help people affected with diabetes and prediabetes seek support from health care professionals and impart the knowledge of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and inculcating the habit of self-monitoring of the disease.
Additionally, new product launches by manufacturers of diabetes supply is another factor contributing to the growth of the self-monitoring blood glucose market. In December 2015, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted 510(k) clearance to DarioHealth Corp., the manufacturer of Dario blood glucose monitoring system, including its components, the Dario blood glucose meter, Dario glucose control solutions, Dario blood glucose test strips, and the Dario app on the Apple iOS 6.1 platform and higher.
The global self-monitoring blood glucose market can be segmented based on product type, distribution channel, and geography. In terms of product type, the self-monitoring blood glucose market can be divided into glucose meters, lancets, and test strips. Based on distribution channel, the self-monitoring blood glucose market can be divided into retail pharmacies, mail order pharmacies, online retailers, and hospital pharmacies.
In terms of geography, the global self-monitoring blood glucose market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America dominates the global self-monitoring blood glucose market due to continued funding for development of new products for the treatment of the condition. North America is followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. Rapidly rising diabetic population in Asia Pacific is likely to fuel the growth of the market during the forecast period.
Prominent players operating in the global self-monitoring blood glucose market are Abbott Laboratories, AgaMatrix, Inc., B. Braun Melsungen AG, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., LifeScan, Inc. (Johnson & Johnson), and Ascensia Diabetes Care Holdings AG.


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TV ReviewsRescue MeSeason 7
Rescue Me: "Menses"
Rescue MeSeason 7
"Menses"
Todd has his hands full this week, so I'm stepping in to monitor the progress of the farewell season of Rescue Me. Tonight, that was a chore equivalent to baby-sitting somebody's Chia Pet so that there'll be a witness if it delivers its first word. Last week's season premiere ended with a bit of a bang, with Tommy, having promised the uncle and cousin who'd been shepherding the daughter he'd done so much to screw up that he was going to deal with them "in a manner that will be both fitting and just", taking a shotgun to their crowded bar. Not a word is said about that tonight. If the cops are looking for Tommy, they don't seem to know where he lives. Neither Teddy nor Mickey put in an appearance; for all I know, they may still be down on the floor, hiding behind the bar. Colleen, whose tumble off the wagon was presumably Tommy's cue to go all Carrie Nation, does appear, and from the looks of things, Tommy's both-barrels response to finding her passed out in the storage room was a great idea, almost as good as when he put her on the path to recovery by almost drowning her in a baptismal font. I can't say that this thought would have ever occurred to me independently, but maybe, in the way he handled his daughter and the way he treated his kinfolk, Tommy was right all along.
That's the problem I've always had with Rescue Me, even going back to those long ago days when a lot of people thought it was a great show, and even a doubter like me had to concede that it was exciting and interesting, and often seemed to be on the verge of actually being about something. Even then, I thought it had a tendency to go soft on Tommy, and fall into line with the tendency that Denis Leary has always had to wallow in, and even sentimentalize, loutish urban machismo under the pretense of exploring it. The show couldn't get enough distance from Tommy and his fellow primates to satirize them, and it didn't seem to want any distance from them, even when they came across as case studies in acute homophobic panic.
There's a famous speech Leary makes in the pilot, about how people first admire the heroes they see in the wake of a nightmare like 9/11, and because they admire them so much, they overreact when they discover they're human after all and begin to see them as monsters. The problem with that speech is that Tommy isn't an admirable but flawed human being: he really is a monster, a violent, self-centered alcoholic homophobe and occasional rapist, whose main reason for continuing to run into burning buildings is that it feeds his adrenaline addiction. There's no reason you couldn't make a good show that dared to ask the audience to relate to a monster; I seem to recall a little series called The Sopranos that went that route with some success. But Rescue Me has often had an undertone of special pleading, as if the point is supposed to be that poor Tommy could never really be a monster, no matter what he does to earn the title. You get the feeling that Leary thinks that any rancid behavior, so long as it's committed by a hyper-verbal penis on legs with solid blue-collar credentials, is defensible because it's liberating wild man behavior, a brave last stand against the forces of political correctness and the evils of the feminizing influence.
Two episodes in, the danger of becoming too comfortable with women and their needs—and I don't mean their sexual needs, I mean the chance that they might ask a man to pick up tampons at the drug store—is the clearest detectable thread running through Rescue Me's final season. The damn women—Tommy's pregnant wife, his ex-mistress, his grown daughter—have taken over his living space, handing out grocery orders and making it difficult for him to sit on the sofa contentedly scratching his balls. They gather around the table, whispering and giggling and all but predicting that Macbeth will be Thane of Cawdor. They get along very well together, which probably means they're up to something. Fleeing the house on a tampon run, Tommy runs into one of his old story-arc buddies from a previous season: Kelly, who is played by Maura Tierney. In a development that seems a little uncomfortably exploitative of the actress's own offscreen health problems, Kelly is suffering from cancer. "Is it serious?" asks Tommy, master conversationalist. "Breast," she says. "I'm down one." I don't know which speaks worse of Denis Leary's opinion of his audience: that he left that line in the script, or that, instead of moving on, he then asks Kelly to explain what it means.
Kelly is very supportive of Tommy's problems with his shrill household coven. She may be a sister, but she's too honest to pretend that women aren't, you know, just a pain in the ass, especially when it's their time of the month and they all start ganging up on you. It's when the writing is this crude that you're really grateful for the show's ability to attract acting talent the likes of Maura Tierney: if you tune out on the content of what she's saying and just listen to the way she says it, the evening may not feel like a total waste. (Leary has been "acting" for some twenty years now, but he's still basically a comedian whose range goes just as far as his ability to remember to answer to the names of the characters he's playing. When his lines aren't meant to be funny, the best he can do is insert some distracting pauses and awkward intonations into his delivery, presumably on the theory that it makes him sound "natural.")
The station house stuff would still feel like a waste of time no matter who was playing it. There was a moment last season when Lou was confronted by his doctor and told that he was absolutely in no physical condition to continue to be a fireman. On a different kind of show—one that was actually interested in exploring the dramatic possibilities that it raised, one where the supporting cast didn't exist just to give the star and co-creator something to react to—that might have led to a real story about a middle-aged man in a deep rut who had to find a way to do something different with his life or accept that it was over. Here, it's an excuse for some wacky antics involving the other guys trying to take Lou's physical for him, complete with urine sample slapstick and that hilarious standby, the two-guys-in-a-bathroom-stall-who-don't-realize-that-someone-can-hear-them-and-they-sound-like-homos routine. As for the scene where Tommy reacts badly to Black Shawn's telling him that he wants to marry his daughter, I assume that it was deliberately inserted into this episode just to establish that Rescue Me is neither as funny nor as edgy as Friday Night Lights, which had an asking-the-hostile-dad-for-his-daughter's-hand scene in its final episode last week that was, at a conservative estimate, eighteen hundred gazillion times better.
Rescue Me, which premiered in 2004, rose from the ashes of the post-9/11 mood in America, and the show was never better or more honest than in the early episodes when the firemen complained that the magical power of the word "fireman", when uttered in conjunction with "9/11", was no longer the surefire yellow brick road to pussy heaven that it used to be. Back then, the show often seemed to want to be about guys who (as Todd wrote here last week) used 9/11 to justify their own bad behavior. More than once, it slipped and felt like a show that didn't know how to do anything but try to shock you with its characters' bad behavior, and used 9/11 as an all-purpose excuse for why you should care. Now. we're farther away from 9/11 than we were when the show started. People joke about it more easily and have woven it into the fabric of their lives and our country's recent history. We've got some perspective about it. And Tommy seems more obsessed with it than ever, even as the show seems more and more hard up to provide a reason to give a shit about Tommy besides the fact that he's haunted by 9/11. After Tommy and Black Shawn have had their unthrilling encounter, Lou says, "If that's how it begins, I can't wait to see how it ends." After all these years at Tommy Gavin's side, he ought to know better than anybody that a lot of things that begin promisingly end by just sort of dribbling away.


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The Trump Legal Team Makes the Case, Joined in Progress
admin November 19, 2020 22 min read
RUSH: We gotta JIP now, the press conference just started. I hate to interrupt myself at that point, but we have to. Here's Rudy Giuliani kicking off the press conference. We'll see how long we stick with this.
GIULIANI: — and we will present in brief the evidence that we've collected over the last — I guess it is two weeks. Also, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing are here with me. There are a lot more lawyers working on this, but we're the — I guess we're the senior lawyers. And Boris Epshteyn.
So I guess the best way to describe this is, when we began our representation of the president, we certainly were confronted with a very anomalous set of results. The president way ahead on election night, seven or 800,000 in Pennsylvania, somehow he lost Pennsylvania. We have statisticians willing to testify that that's almost statistically impossible to have happened in the period of time that it happened. But, of course, that's just speculation.
As we started investigating, both our investigations and the very patriotic and brave American citizens that have come forward are extraordinary, extraordinary number of people, extraordinary number of witnesses. And what emerged very quickly is this is not a singular voter fraud in one state. This pattern repeats itself in a number of states, almost exactly the same pattern, which to any experienced investigator, prosecutor would suggest that there was a plan from a centralized place to execute these various acts of voter fraud, specifically focused on big cities, and specifically focused on, as you would imagine, big cities controlled by Democrats.
RUSH: Right. And I think —
GIULIANI: And particularly focused on big cities that have a long history of corruption. The number of voter fraud cases in Philadelphia could fill a library. Just a few weeks ago there was a conviction for voter fraud and one two weeks before that. And I've often said, I guess sarcastically, but it's true, the only surprise I would have found in this is if Philadelphia hadn't cheated in this election; because for the last 60 years they've cheated in just about every single election.
You could say the same thing about Detroit. Each one of these cities are cities that are controlled by Democrats, which means they can get away with anything they want to do. It means they have a certain degree of control over — certainly control the election board completely. And they control law enforcement and, unfortunately, they have some friendly judges that will issue ridiculously irrational opinions just to come out in their favor. So let's start with the specifics.
RUSH: Yeah.
GIULIANI: Pennsylvania.
GIULIANI: In Pennsylvania, the margin of victory now for Biden, which is not a victory; it's a fraud — is 69,140 votes. The reality is that we are now at a count of 682,770 ballots for which we have affidavits that there was no inspection of that ballot at the time that it was entered in the vote. It was a mail ballot. Mail ballots are particularly prone to fraud. We were warned about that by Jimmy Carter, President Jimmy Carter and Secretary Baker in a report about a dozen years ago in which they said that mail balloting is particularly susceptible of fraud, that we should very carefully consider ever doing it and that it can be taken advantage of.
Justice Souter warned us of the same thing in a comment in an election law case. And even the New York Times wrote articles about how dangerous mail voting, mail-in voting was. And this is the first time we ever did it en masse. And I think we proved that all three are problems. It's not only susceptible to fraud, it is easily susceptible to fraud, particularly if you have a plan or scheme which sounds eerily similar to what Joe Biden told us a few days before the election that he had the best voter fraud team in the world.
RUSH: No, no, no, no.
GIULIANI: But they were good. I don't know that they were that good because they made significant mistakes, like all crooks do, and we caught 'em. One of them was pushing out Republican inspectors. Every state, almost every civilized country, even Tanzania and places that you wouldn't think of have rules about inspectors, particularly for mail-in ballots. And why particularly for mail-in ballots? Because they can more easily be defrauded and —
RUSH: You don't have to have any ID on a mail-in ballot. Did you know there was voter fraud in Tanzania? I didn't know that. (crosstalk)
GIULIANI: — it's so easy. Well, you fill out an envelope like this. You put your — usually in New York would be your assembly district and precinct in which you're voting. You fill out your name and your address and you sign it. You then use an inner envelope, and you put the ballot inside the inner envelope. You seal it all and you send it in. When it's being counted, almost invariably in the United States up until the mass cheating that went on in this election, a Republican and a Democrat inspector, as well as others if there are other parties, is allowed to watch the unsealing of this ballot. It used to go on all over America when we conducted honest elections.
RUSH: This is an important point here, folks.
GIULIANI: Because the only time you can ever find out if it's a fraudulent ballot is when it is looked at. The minute you approve this, it's thrown away —
RUSH: Right, when it's open.
GIULIANI: — gone for eternity. The only thing left is the vote. That could have been Mickey Mouse. That could have been a dead person. That could have been not filled out properly. That could have been the same person 30 times.
RUSH: It's a real point.
GIULIANI: And all these things have happened, by the way. That could have been nothing filled out. We'd never know. So, for example, the recount being done in Georgia will tell us nothing because these fraudulent ballots will just be counted again because they wouldn't supply the signatures to match the ballots. So it means nothing to have counted these ballots because, for example, in Pennsylvania where we have probably our most precise evidence, 682,770 of these ballots were cast, put in, and they weren't inspected, which renders them ballots that are null and void. Cannot be counted, have to be removed from the vote.
Why? For several reasons, not the least of which is that was basically only one of two places in the state where it was done. So in the other parts of the state there was a legitimate inspection of the ballots. So if you have two different standards in different parts of the state, one favoring one part of the state, the other disfavoring the other part of the state, that's a classic violation of equal-protection clause of the United States Constitution, Bush v. Gore being the most recent case that teaches that.
That's not the only fraud that went on in Pennsylvania. All of the other frauds carried out in the other states by the Democrat bosses happened there as well. For example, if you've made a mistake in that ballot and you lived in Philadelphia or in Pittsburgh, you were allowed to fix the mistake. But if you lived in what would be considered more Republican or Trump parts of the state, you were given no such right. One of our plaintiffs, Mr. Henry, cast an absentee ballot. And he failed to put it in the secure envelope inside. He just put it in open, naked.
RUSH: Naked.
GIULIANI: The ballot was —
GIULIANI: — cast aside because it was invalid, because that breaks the privacy of the vote.
RUSH: Right.
GIULIANI: In Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, if they noticed that there wasn't an inner envelope, they'd contact the voter and allow 'em to vote again, or if you didn't fill it out completely or if he made a mistake and didn't sign his full name, he was allowed to cure it. There is no such provision under the law of Pennsylvania. The Democrat secretary of state made that up in order to maximize the votes in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and to minimize the votes in the other parts of the state. Clearly illegal, clearly voter fraud, easily provable, hundreds of witnesses, maybe thousands.
To give you another example. We have 17,000 provisional ballots cast in Pittsburgh. Do you know what a provisional ballot is? Provisional ballot usually happens this way, and about 15 of the 17,000 happened this way. You walked in and you say, "I'm here to vote today."
"Oh, Mr. Giuliani, you already voted."
"I did? I don't remember voting."
"Oh, yes, yes, you cast an absentee ballot."
"No, I didn't."
"Yes, you did."
"Yes, you did." So why did that happen 17,000 times in Pittsburgh? People walked in thinking — actually 15,000 to be precise. Why did it happen 15,000 times that people in Pittsburgh walked in to vote and they had already voted, according to the Democrat election machine? Did they forget? That many people with bad memories in Pittsburgh? Or is the following correct? That as witnesses will testify, they were instructed by the Democrat bosses, when they had a ballot in which there was no one registered, just assign it to somebody. Just assign it to Rudy Giuliani.
And maybe Rudy Giuliani wouldn't show up to vote. And if he does show up to vote, we'll give him a provisional ballot. That is what we call circumstantial evidence of the fraud. The direct evidence of the fraud are the people who will testify that in fact that's what happened to them.
RUSH: All right. We have to step in. First obscene profit time-out of the day. We get the idea where this is going. Rudy's giving a summary of the kind of fraud that they have found in various places and examples of it. We'll take a brief break and come back, and we'll figure out how long we want to stay with this and do all that behind the scenes, get back here as soon we can. Sit tight, folks.
RUSH: Rudy Giuliani conducting the press conference as it's begun, is now going through details of individual workers and how they were threatened and how they were ordered to cheat. They're willing to have their names used in some cases, in other cases not. He doesn't want to use their names, afraid what's gonna happen to them. He's explaining that now. We'll rejoin him.
GIULIANI: — and coach them for whom to vote. Completely illegal. She will testify to that. I don't know. Biden's people can cross-examine her, but you can't just throw it away. "Gee, there's no evidence." Next time you say that, you'll be lying, because there is evidence. By the way, this is public. You can all get it. It's attached to the complaint in Costantino v. The City of Detroit.
Then she was instructed by my supervisor not to ask for a driver's license or any photo ID when a person was trying to vote. Don't ask for identification? Why would you not ask for identification? Because you knew that a lot of people not entitled to vote are gonna come in and early vote. Because you knew that illegal immigrants were gonna be allowed to vote. You knew, if you lived in Philadelphia, unless you're stunod — that's an Italian expression for stupid — unless you're stupid you knew a lot of people were coming over from Camden to vote. They do every year. Happens all the time in Philly. It's about as frequent as getting beaten up at a Philadelphia Eagles basketball — football game. Happens all the time. All the time. And it is allowed to happen because it is a Democrat, corrupt city.
RUSH: Being beat up at an Eagles game? (crosstalk)
GIULIANI: — many, many years.
RUSH: — Santa Claus. (crosstalk)
GIULIANI: — and get away with it. They didn't carry it out in neutral places. They didn't carry it out in Republican places. They didn't carry it out where the law is respected.
RUSH: That's true.
GIULIANI: They carry it out in corrupt — a corrupt city where the district attorney releases criminals en masse.
RUSH: They didn't even do it in Tanzania.
GIULIANI: She also said, "I observed a large number of people who came to the satellite location to vote in person. But they had already applied for and submitted an absentee ballot." So she observed a lot of people voting twice.
RUSH: Okay. We have another obscene profit time-out. They can't miss these, ladies and gentlemen. We've missed enough of them when I was gone. We'll come back and we'll keep assessing this as it goes.
RUSH: Okay. We're gonna keep it here at the EIB Network. We gave you an idea what's going on. Rudy Giuliani laying the groundwork here. There are other people at this presser. The female lawyer, Ms. Ellis is there. We've got Sidney Powell waiting in the wings. And Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing are there. I assume they're all gonna speak at some point. Rudy is laying the groundwork, and what Rudy's doing is presenting the evidence.
The media, the left all say, "You guys don't have any evidence for this. You're swinging away, you're flailing away." No, there's all kinds of evidence and Rudy's going through it. Now, here's the thing. You and I know everything Rudy said. We pay attention to it. We follow it. It's like every day in America in the news. We know what our side believes and says and is uncovered. The people that don't watch or listen to conservative media don't know.
And in that interest, CNN, MSNBC are not carrying this press conference. Fox is. The One America News Network is. I assume NewsMax is. But I don't think CBS, ABC, NBC are. So the evidence that Rudy is divulging — and it's real, and it's been known for awhile, is still going in one direction. So what has to happen here, at some point they get they're laying the groundwork, we're gonna get to specifics, we better get to specifics of how many votes Trump has been cheated out of? How many votes did Biden illegally get rewarded to him or awarded. In this recount, in this postelection night shenanigans, how many illegal votes ended up going to Biden? How many ballots only had his name on them?
Trump has an 800,000 lead on election night. Now he's down, what — I don't know the number is, but it's unbelievable to lose 800,000 votes after they stopped the count. So we need to get to the hard numbers of how many votes we're talking about here, because nobody's gonna take this any further than it is unless there's evidence that there's enough of this fraud and chicanery to overturn the result.
And that's the task the president's lawyers have here. And if that kind of information ends up being divulged, then we will break off and rejoin the press conference. That kind of data is the kind of data I think that Sidney Powell would be in charge of presenting. So if we get to her at some point, we'll go back.
RUSH: Sidney Powell is now at the microphone explaining her part in this, and we join the press conference now.
POWELL: — referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out. We have one very strong witness who has explained how it all works. His affidavit is attached to the pleadings of Lin Wood and the lawsuit he filed in Georgia. It is a stunning, detailed affidavit because he was with Hugo Chavez while he was being briefed on how it worked. He was with Hugo Chavez when he saw it operate to make sure the election came out his way. That was the express purpose for creating the software. He has seen it operate. And as soon as he saw the multiple states shut down the voting on the night of the election, he knew the same thing was happening here, that that was what had gone on.
Now, the software itself was created with so many variables and so many back doors that can be hooked up to the internet or a thumb drive stuck in it or whatever. But one of its most characteristic features is its ability to flip votes. It can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden, which we might never have uncovered had the votes for President Trump not been so overwhelming in so many of these states that it broke algorithm that had been plugged into the system.
And that's what caused them to have to shut down in the states they shut down in. That's when they came in the back door with all the mail-in ballots, many of which they had actually fabricated. Some were on pristine paper with identically matching, perfect circled dots for Mr. Biden. Others were shoved in in batches. They're always put in in a certain number of batches, and people would rerun the same batch. This corresponds to our statistical evidence that shows incredible spikes in the vote counts at particular times. And that corresponds to eyewitness testimony of numerous people who have come forward and said they saw the ballots come in the back door at that time.
Notably, the Dominion executives are nowhere to be found now. They are moving their offices overnight to different places. Their office in Toronto was shared with one of the Soros entities. One of the leaders of the Dominion project overall is Lord Malloch-Brown, Mr. Soros' number 2 person in the U.K. and part of his organization. There are ties of the Dominion leadership to the Clinton Foundation and to other known politicians in this country.
Just to give you a brief description of how this worked, I'm gonna quote from a letter that was written, and I will read that to make sure I get the quotes right. This person was objecting to the United States' acquisition of Sequoia voting systems by Smartmatic, a foreign owned country. I believe this transaction raises exactly the sort of foreign ownership issues that CFIUS is best positioned to examine for national security purposes.
It's undisputed that Smartmatic is foreign owned and is (unintelligible) Sequoia. They keep changing the names as they go along. Different times when a problem comes up they just create another corporation and call it a different name. But it was a voting machine company doing business in the United States. Sequoia voting machines were used to record over 125 million votes during the 2004 presidential election in the United States.
Smartmatic now acknowledges that Antonio Mugica, a Venezuela businessman has controlling interest in Smartmatic, but the company has not revealed who all the Smartmatic owners are. According to the press, Smartmatic's owners are hidden through a web of offshore private entities. And that is in fact true. Smartmatic has been associated with the Venezuelan government led by Hugo Chavez which is openly hostile to the United States, and of course as we all know communistic and really brutalizing its own people.
The system has been continued there by Mr. Maduro and ensured his election. Smartmatic's possible connection to the Venezuela government poses a potential national security concern in the context of its acquisition of Sequoia because electronic voting machines are susceptible to tampering, and insiders are in the best position to engage in such –
RUSH: Attention EIB affiliates, we are sticking with this through the upcoming commercial break. We are staying with this. The American people need to hear this and nobody else is covering it.
POWELL: — Venezuelan origin and evaluate Smartmatic's ownership to determine who could have influence and control over these other Sequoia products and services are important to the national security of the United States. This letter was written to Hank Paulson on October 6, 2006, by Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney. Senators Klobuchar and Warren have raised these concerns as recently as December 2019. Why our government has not taken them seriously is beyond my comprehension unless they have some of the three letter agencies have used them themselves in other parts of the world. We know that the technology was exported to affect an election in Argentina. That's admitted by our friend who wrote the affidavit about Hugo Chavez and his interest in Smartmatic.
Again, in 2006, Carolyn Maloney wrote the Honorable John Snow, the secretary of the Treasury, about the issues. Speaking of Smartmatic's leadership, one of the Smartmatic patent holders, Eric Coomer, I believe his name is, is on the Web as being recorded in a conversation with Antifa members, saying that he had the election rigged for Mr. Biden. Nothing to worry about here. And he was going to — they were going to F Trump. His social media is filled with hatred for the president and for the United States of America as a whole, as are the social media accounts of many other Smartmatic people.
There has been widespread use of this. Dominion itself is utilized in 2,000 jurisdictions in 30 states. It has been uncertifiable in multiple states who realized all the problems that it had, including Texas. Experts have described it across the board from a Princeton group of three professors to experts that we have talked to about its end user vulnerabilities. People can admittedly go in and change whatever they want. They can set the ratio of votes from one thing to another. They can say that a Biden vote counts as 1.25 and a Trump vote counts as .75. And those may be the numbers that were actually used here.
It's not just the swing states that were affected. The algorithm was likely run across the country to affect the entire election. Like I said, we only discovered it this year because of the overwhelming number of votes for President Trump in the swing states that caused the machines to have to shut down for them to backfill or adding votes. We have evidence of different numbers of votes being injected into the system, the same, identical, unique six-digit number multiple times in at least two states that we've analyzed so far. And I'm talking about like 341,542 votes for Biden and 100,012 for Trump.
There's no logical explanation, no logical explanation for the same numbers being injected 20 minutes apart into the machine. The software manual itself, you can download it from the internet. And I would encourage you all to read it. Because it specifically advertises some of these things as features of the system. Why it was ever allowed into this country is beyond my comprehension. And why nobody has dealt with it is absolutely appalling.
The machines were easily accessible to hackers. There's video on the net that will explain to you how a kid with a cell phone can hack one of these voting machines. There's been no oversight of Dominion or its software. Workers in each county were trained by Dominion, but there's no evidence of any monitoring otherwise. We have testimony of different workers admitting that they were trained how to –
RUSH: Okay. For EIB affiliates, we're taking our break here at the top of the hour, but we are going to continue to feed down the broadcast line the press conference being conducted here. Sidney Powell will continue speaking. The American people need to hear this, and I don't think it's being carried too many places; so we now continue to feed while we take the break, and it's up to you affiliates what you want to do. It's your show.
POWELL: We have testimony of workers admitting they were trained how on dispose of Trump votes and add to Biden votes. The software has a feature pursuant to which you can drag and drop any number of batches of votes to the candidate of your choice or simply throw them away, so we have mathematical evidence in a number of states of massive quantities of Trump votes being trashed. Simply put in the trash like you would on your computer with any file and Biden votes being injected. That's in addition to the flipping. I mean, it really happens in two ways.
There is the algorithm that runs that automatically flips all the votes and then each operator has the ability to go in, override settings. They can ignore a signature. They can ignore the top line of the ballot. They can go down-ballot and select who they want to change the results for. The gentleman who founded Smartmatic, there is video of him on the internet explaining that yes, in at least one occasion he admits they changed a million votes with no problem.
Many of the jurisdictions that have had this problem might not have known of the issues. But many did and I think a full-scale criminal investigation needs to be undertaken immediately by the Department of Justice and by every state's equivalent, attorney general's office or state investigatory unit because there's evidence of different benefits being provided to the people who spent a hundred million dollars of taxpayer money at the last minute for their state to get the Dominion voting systems put in in time for this election in different ways. There's one person that a lawyer told me got, quote, election insurance, meaning that he would able to make sure that he was elected. I'm sure they explained that feature in detail to many people who expressed interest in putting this voting system in.
Texas denied certification of the Dominion system in 2019, but there are no doubt issues with the software that Texas did use. Unbeknownst to Texas, I would imagine, since they went to great trouble to examine the Dominion systems and reject them. But other software — the source code that does the alterations is embedded, we have been told in the source code all across the country in all the voting machines.
There is no doubt it has been used to alter elections in other countries. We know specifically that Venezuela exported it for that purpose to Argentina and other Latin-American companies to make sure that the corrupt rulers who were willing to pay the highest price for being in office were allowed to rig their elections. This is stunning, heartbreaking, infuriating, and the most unpatriotic acts I can even imagine for people in this country to have participated in in any way, shape, or form.
And I want the American public to know right now that we will not be intimidated. American patriots are fed up with the corruption from the local level to the highest level of our government. And we are going to take this country back. We are not going to be intimidated. We are not going to back down. We are going to clean this mess up now. President Trump won by a landslide. We are going to prove it and we are going to reclaim the United States of America for the people who vote for freedom.
REPORTER: How come you're not suing the Wisconsin counties that used it? Why are you only doing a recount –
ELLIS: Excuse me, we're not at the questions at this point.
REPORTER: Why are you not —
ELLIS: So, excuse me, we're not at the questions at this point. My name is Jenna Ellis and I'm the senior legal adviser to the Trump campaign I'd like to just explain now where we've been and where we're at and what you can expect from this process. So what you have heard, I'm sure, in the fake newspapers tomorrow will be one of two things, either there was not sufficient evidence that we've presented or we spoke too long. Okay, so what we've heard now is basically an opening statement.
This is what you can expect to see when we get to court to actually have a full trial on the merits to actually show this evidence in court and prove our case. This is not a law and order episode where everything is neatly wrapped up in 60 minutes. For those of you who are here in this room or have maybe tuned out in other networks, clearly you've never been court reporters. Trials take time. Putting on evidence takes time.
This is basically an opening statement so the American people can understand what the networks have been hiding and what they refuse to cover because all of your fake news headlines are dancing around the merits of this case and are trying to delegitimize what we are doing here. Let me be very clear that our objective is to make sure to preserve and protect election integrity.
President Trump has been saying from day one that this about maintaining free and fair elections in this country. It is not about overturning an outcome. It is about making sure that election integrity is preserved and every American should want that. If every American is not on board with that, you have to ask yourself why. And if your fake news network is not covering this or allowing you to cover it fairly and accurately, you should ask yourself why.
This is absolutely a legitimate legal basis. We have been asked to provide an entire case that generally would take years in civil litigation. I've been a prosecutor, I have tried cases with far simpler facts. One thing happened in a matter of minutes, and it still takes days. And we go through a jury process. This is the court of public opinion right now. We are not trying our case in the court of public opinion, because if we were we would get unbiased jurors. I would strike 99% of you from the jury and I would be allowed to because of the fake news coverage that you provide.
You're not unbiased jurors. And until you step out of your role as a journalist and actually go into a courtroom and you are a judge on a bench that has sworn an oath to be unbiased in our separation of powers, then your opinion does not matter. The facts matter. The truth matters. And if you are fair reporters, you will cover that fairly and appropriately, and you will allow coverage of our media team here and our legal team. That is absolutely shocking that all you cover are around the margins. And I've seen all of you taking pictures right now, and I can anticipate what your headlines are going to be. If you are not willing to talk about the evidence that has been presented… (Beep cut out of Jenna Ellis.)
(Rush music starts)
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text:
LAW OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA
of January 15, 2009 No. ZR-5
About local self-government in the city of Yerevan
Accepted by National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia on December 26, 2008
Section 1 Local self-government, territorial administration, local government bodies in the city of Yerevan
Chapter 1 General provisions
Article 1. Subject of regulation of the Law
1. This Law establishes features of forming in the city of Yerevan (further – Yerevan) local self-government, territorial administration and local government bodies.
Article 2. Legal status of Yerevan
1. Yerevan is municipality – community of the population of Yerevan.
2. Yerevan – the capital of the Republic of Armenia.
3. Yerevan is the legal entity having public law, the property right and other property rights.
4. Yerevan has the budget, and also seal with the image of the Coat of arms of the Republic of Armenia and the name.
Article 3. Basic principles of local self-government of Yerevan
1. Local self-government in Yerevan is based on the principles established by the Law of the Republic of Armenia "About local self-government" with ensuring pro rata development of all administrative districts of Yerevan.
Article 4. Administrative borders of Yerevan
1. Administrative borders of Yerevan are established by the Law of the Republic of Armenia "About administrative-territorial division of the Republic of Armenia".
Article 5. Local government bodies of Yerevan
1. Local government bodies of Yerevan are:
1) Local government board of Yerevan (further - Council);
2) the mayor of Yerevan (further - the mayor).
Article 6. The legal basis of local self-government in Yerevan
1. Powers of local government bodies in Yerevan are established by this Law and other laws.
2. Non-regulated this Law of the relation, connected with local self-government in Yerevan, are regulated by the Law of the Republic of Armenia "About local self-government" in that measure in what they do not contradict this Law.
Article 7. Residence of local government bodies of Yerevan
1. Local government bodies of Yerevan – Council and the mayor – are effective in the residence to the address: Ulitsa Argishti 1.
2. Council can organize the activities (including holding meetings) in other places - according to the decision of Council.
Article 8. Official website of Yerevan
1. The official website of Yerevan – www.yerevan.am.
Article 9. Territorial administration in Yerevan
1. The territorial administration in Yerevan is exercised by the body authorized by the Government of the Republic of Armenia. The ministry of territorial administration of the Republic of Armenia performs the powers allocated for marzpeta (governors) by other laws, legal acts of the Republic of Armenia in that measure in what they do not contradict this Law.
2. Certain functions of territorial administration in Yerevan can be transferred to other systems of public administration by the order of the Government.
3. In Yerevan features of local self-government are established by this Law.
Article 10. Symbols of Yerevan
1. Symbols of Yerevan are:
1) coat of arms of Yerevan;
2) flag of Yerevan;
3) anthem of Yerevan.
2. The description of the coat of arms and flag of Yerevan, and also the anthem of Yerevan are established by Council.
3. The flag and the coat of arms of Yerevan are established over the building of the residence of Council, the mayor, in assembly hall of Council and in the mayor's office.
4. Other cases and procedure for compulsory use of symbols of Yerevan by Council, the mayor, and also the organizations subordinated to Yerevan are established by Council.
Chapter 2 Council
Article 11. Legal status of Council
1. The supreme body of local self-government in Yerevan is Council which exercises control of activities of the mayor.
2. Council when implementing the powers allocated for it by the Constitution and the law of the Republic of Armenia is independent and is effective only for the benefit of Yerevan and from his name.
Article 12. Powers of Council
1. Council:
1) is accepted by the regulations;
2) elects the mayor in the cases and procedure established by this Law;
3) makes in the procedure established by this Law the decision on expression of mistrust to the mayor;
4) makes on representation of the mayor the decision concerning the charter, structure and the staff list of offices of the city hall of Yerevan (further - the city hall) and heads of the administrative district;
5) makes the decision on rates of official pay rates of the mayor, his deputies, advisers, assistants, the press secretary, employees of the office of the city hall, Chapters, deputy heads of administrative districts, the staff of administration of the head of the administrative district. The rate of official pay rate of the mayor cannot exceed the double size of rate of official pay rate of the deputy of National Assembly;
Establishes 6) within the rates provided by the law, the local taxes and duties establishes payments for the services rendered by municipality (including the payments necessary for the works which are carried out within obligatory regulations for the purpose of content of the apartment buildings managed by the head of the administrative district).
During implementation of the specified power Council can be guided by the principle of zoning, at the same time for various taxes, duties, payments various zoning can be established;
7) makes the decision on procedure for property management, considered as property of Yerevan;
8) determines nature, amount, conditions and procedure of obligatory improvement of Yerevan of the real estate which is in ownership of the owner or owner of real estate and the territory public, adjacent to it, being in administrative borders;
9) makes the decision on what property is transferred to the control to heads of administrative districts;
10) makes the decision on what of the organizations subordinated to Yerevan are placed under authority of heads of administrative districts;
11) makes the decision on annual, five-year, long-term and special development programs of Yerevan;
12) makes the decision on attraction of the credits, loans and other borrowed funds in the procedure established by the law;
13) can establish additional terms of implementation of the regulations operating in Yerevan in addition to the regulations established by town-planning normative and technical documents;
14) makes the decision on creation, reorganization, dissolution of the organizations subordinated to Yerevan, approval of their charter or changes in it, and also participation of Yerevan in other organizations and the termination of this participation;
15) makes the decision on structure, number, the staff list and rates of official pay rates of staff of the organizations subordinated to Yerevan having the status of organization;
16) makes the decision on the budget of Yerevan and on changes in it;
17) exercises control of budget implementation, it is competent to determine details of target use of budgetary funds, to cancel the relevant decisions of the mayor concerning the order budgetary funds to consider and make decisions according to the annual statement of the mayor on budget implementation;
18) makes the decision on the annual program of transfer to use and property acquisitions, being property of Yerevan (including participation of municipality in the authorized capital of the legal entity) in which motives, terms, the purpose of transfer to use or alienations, in case of transfer to use - the term of use and the amount of payment shall be specified, in case of direct sale - selling price, and in case of public auctions – the starting price, at the same time in the annual program of alienation of the parcels of land also the location, code of the parcels of land established by the master plan of Yerevan the purposes and motives of alienation shall be specified;
19) makes the decision on the master plan of the city of Yerevan, changes in it, and also detailed designs;
20) makes the decision on projects of zoning of the separate territories of the city of Yerevan, and also the detailed designs developed according to the master plan of the city of Yerevan;
20. 1) makes the decision on change of purpose of the parcels of land;
21) on representation of the mayor makes the decision on approval of agreements on cooperation with other cities and other administrative and territorial units;
22) makes the decision on holding local referendum the majority from total number of members of council of elders at the initiative of the mayor or at least than one third of total number of members of council of elders;
23) makes the decision on the name and renaming of streets, prospectuses, the areas, parks of Yerevan, educational, cultural and other organizations subordinated to Yerevan. In exceptional cases makes the decision on the name or renaming into honor of any celebrated personality before the expiration of five years since her death based on the public hearings which are carried out for this purpose;
24) in addition to rules of activities in the sphere of trade, public catering and servicing establishes additional terms of application of these rules in Yerevan, and also additional rules;
25) establishes criteria of qualification categories of the organizations of the sphere of trade and servicing and procedure for their assignment;
25. 1) establishes requirements imposed to Items of mobile trade, conditions, terms, admissible places of implementation of mobile trade, procedure, conditions of their provision (allocation) and hours of implementation of activities, and also not permitted types of the sold goods or the rendered services;
25. 2) is established by procedure for movement of Items of mobile trade or vehicles on the special territory, their accounting there and the amount of payments for movement of Items of mobile trade or vehicles on the special territory and their storage;
25. 3) establishes the requirements, conditions shown to implementation of peddling trade in the territories public which are the state-owned and municipal property (streets, squares, parks and other territories), located in the administrative territory of the city of Yerevan, types of the goods sold by implementation of peddling trade and admissible places of implementation of peddling trade;
26) makes the decision on additional terms of permission to trade in alcoholic beverages and tobacco products in Yerevan according to rules of trade in alcoholic beverages and (or) tobacco products in the Republic of Armenia;
27) makes the decision on additional terms of the organization of fairs, and also the organizations of trade in the open air in Yerevan;
28) makes the decision on additional terms to the list of location of baths, saunas, pleasure objects in Yerevan and to permissions to activities;
29) makes the decision on procedure for activities of the cemeteries located in Yerevan and the organization, and implementation of works on their content;
29. 1) sets the restrictions, requirements and conditions shown to those buildings and structures where services of ritual of civil funeral (farewell) are performed and provided;
30) makes the decision on content of the green territories public of Yerevan and instructions for use them;
30. 1) performs other powers provided by the Law of the Republic of Armenia "About rubbish disposal and sanitary cleaning";
31) establishes advertizing zone of city value (in the form of the card), streets, squares, parks of city value;
32) establishes town-planning zone of city value (in the form of the card), and also conditions under which town-planning activities, though are performed outside town-planning zone of city value, however city value has;
33) adopts legal acts on the questions concerning local self-government and which are not taken away by the law to competence of other bodies;
34) makes the decision on the town-planning charter of Yerevan;
35) according to the proposal of the mayor makes the decision on assignment to citizens of the Republic of Armenia and foreign citizens of rank of the honorary citizen of the city of Yerevan;
Establishes 36) according to the proposal of the mayor the mayor and procedure for forming and activities, power of the advisory boards operating in case of the head of the administrative district on a voluntary basis;
37) on representation of the mayor is solved by procedure of own powers established for the purpose of the voluntary problem resolution and necessary financial resources;


For the last three weeks, our #DECOREX100 campaign has been keeping Twitter abuzz. In case you hadn't heard about it yet, we were looking for the top 100 interior design Tweeters, whose interesting, influential or entertaining tweets of 140 characters or less are eagerly read, with the nominations coming directly from the interior design community through Twitter.
We were overwhelmed by the response to the campaign, which saw us receive 3300 tweets from the global interior design community, nominating a total of 282 interior design Twitter influencers.
On Monday we revealed our finalists - take a look at the #DECOREX100 page to see who made the list! All finalists can claim a virtual 'badge' (above right) to display on their websites or blogs - email [email protected] to get yours.


Sindibad Amusement Park in Casablanca is supposed to formally resume after several reschedules.
The Mayor of Casablanca stated that the amusement park will formally resume. It is the only amusement park in Morocco, is anticipated to flock visitors and locals who will take pleasure in an assortment of conventional activities and rides.
Additionally, the conventional rides, including the dizzying dodgems, slides, and paddleboats and roller coaster, it will also feature a zoo and an archaeological park. The zoo encompasses half of the park, and will display animal species from five continents.
The recommence was scheduled for May 25, however local authorities were pushed to postponed the reopening to an unidentified date due to the changes and variations were not concluded yet.
Rates are approximated to be reasonable priced for all. The ticket rates have been approximated at MAD25 each person and MAD 70 for a family of four members.
With the entrance tickets, families will be able to take pleasure in Several enticements surrounded by the park, hence other games will be paid games whose ticket price is approximated at MAD 15.
Sindibad Amusement Park has been provided a lease for life. The park will offer hotel rooms situated nearby the coast, with views of Casablanca's seashore. It will also contain stores, a forest with picnic areas, a beach club, a clubhouse and trails dedicated for walking and cycling.
The Sindibad Amusement Park initially launched in 2006, before it had to close its doors for renovation and restoration.


I don't know about you but I need hugs from my family and friends. Life has a way of knocking you down now and then and a nice hug from family and friends will bring you right out of your depression and put you on the right path the Angels want you to be on. I do not know what I would have done without the protection of the Angels. They are always here for me. It's so comforting to know they are holding me up with I feel sad. Which isn't too often. The Angels have gifted me after all my struggles and tribulations through the years. I feel so happy and content in this part of my life and I thank them from the bottom of my heart. I hope you have the best day ever. Life is too short to waste it. Love life and embrace it with all you have. Love others and do to them as you want things done to you. Send love everywhere. Tell your family and friends you love them all the time. Hug them when you have the chance. Keep them close. Be kind to everyone. Send nothing but love out to the Universe and it will come back at you tenfold. Thank God every day for the blessings she/he is giving you each and every day. Love life and be happy. You deserve it. You have earned it. Let yourself go and embrace the love surrounding you. Don't be afraid. Enjoy Life!!!
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text:
Ulli Kulke (eigentlich Ulrich Kulke; * 20. August 1952 in Benthe) ist ein deutscher Journalist und Buchautor.

Leben
Ulli Kulke wuchs in Benthe auf und besuchte Gymnasien in Gehrden und Braunschweig, wo er Schülersprecher und Bezirksschülersprecher wurde. Er studierte Volkswirtschaft und Wirtschaftspädagogik an der Freien Universität Berlin. 1979 begann er als Redakteur für Betrieb und Gewerkschaft bei der taz in Berlin. 1984/85 arbeitete er als Referent für Entwicklungspolitik bei der Bundestagsfraktion der Grünen in Bonn und kehrte danach als Wirtschaftsredakteur zur taz zurück.

Von 1990 bis 1993 arbeitete er als Redakteur bei der Zeitschrift natur in München, bis 1996 als Ressortleiter Wissenschaft bei der Wochenpost in Berlin. Bis 2001 war er stellvertretender Chefredakteur des Magazins mare in Hamburg, wo er unter anderem eine Kolumne über die pazifische Insel Pitcairn schrieb. Bis 2016 arbeitete er als Reporter und Autor bei der Tageszeitung Die Welt und der Welt am Sonntag.

Als Journalist schreibt er vor allem über historische und wissenschaftliche Themen. Auf Welt Online schrieb Kulke den "klimaskeptisch" geprägten Blog Donner und Doria. Seine Texte erscheinen auch in dem Weblog Achse des Guten und vereinzelt auf der Webseite von EIKE, einem Verein, der die menschengemachte Erderwärmung bestreitet. Als Buchautor hat er sich auf das Zeitalter der Entdeckungen spezialisiert und mehrere Bücher zu diesem Thema veröffentlicht.

Von 1999 bis 2004 war Kulke Mitglied der Vorjury für den Egon-Erwin-Kisch-Preis für Journalisten, von 2005 bis 2019 saß er in der Vorjury für den Henri-Nannen-Preis, in dem der Egon-Erwin-Kisch-Preis aufgegangen ist.

Ulli Kulke ist ein Sohn von Erich Kulke und ein Bruder von Hermann Kulke und Wilhelm Kulke. Er ist verheiratet, hat zwei Töchter und lebt in Berlin.

Veröffentlichungen (Auswahl)
 Betriebsnahe Tarifpolitik zur Stärkung der gewerkschaftlichen Basis. Verlag Die Arbeitswelt, Berlin 1977, ISBN  	978-3-88114-215-1
 Die großen Entdecker. Theiss-Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-8062-1994-X
 Abenteuer Weltgeschichte. Beltz-Verlag, Weinheim 2007, ISBN 3-407-75328-4
 Alexander von Humboldt. Reise nach Südamerika. Frederking & Thaler, München 2010, ISBN 978-3-89405-773-2
 Vasco da Gama. Die Suche nach den Gewürzinseln. Frederking & Thaler, München 2011, ISBN 978-3-89405-791-6
 Weltraumstürmer. Wernher von Braun und der Wettlauf zum Mond. Quadriga, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86995-026-6
 mit Wolfgang Korn: Lebensraum Meer. Menschen, Küsten, Handelsrouten. Fackelträger-Verlag, Köln 2015, ISBN  978-3-7716-4597-7
 '69 – Der dramatische Wettlauf zum Mond – Die Apollo 8 Mission veränderte die Welt. Stuttgart 2018, ISBN 978-3-7716-4597-7
 mit Utta Raifer: Das Berliner Schloss. Geschichten aus fünf Jahrhunderten. Verlag Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin 2020. ISBN 978-3947215898
 Erwin Wickert: Abenteurer zwischen den Welten – Ein Leben als Diplomat und Schriftsteller. Langen-Müller, München 2021. ISBN 978-3-7844-3620-3. Besprechungen: Alan Posener: Der Nazi-Diplomat und sein allzu nachsichtiger Biograf. In: starke-meinungen.de, 16. Februar 2022, online, sowie 21. Februar 2022, online; Robert von Lucius: ; Immo Sennewald: ; Volker Seitz:

Preise und Auszeichnungen
 Ludwig-Bölkow-Journalistenpreis, 2008
 InnoPlanta-Journalistenpreis, 2009
 Bambini-Preis der Europäischen Jungakademikergesellschaft, 2010
 ITB-Buch-Award, 2011
 Journalisten-Preis der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Ernährung, 2015

Weblinks

 Ulli Kulkes Website

Einzelnachweise

Journalist (Deutschland)
Person (taz)
Autor
Deutscher
Geboren 1952
Mann

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


« Where are the fireflies ?
Posted on July 10, 2009 under Economics.
Recently, I came across this short article by Amit Klein, comparing the costs of "living very well" in New York versus Mumbai (India). Its an interesting comparison based on his experiences so far in Mumbai and does err on the high side. In one of the comparisons, he compared the price of the Big Mac in the two cities, which got me thinking whether his comparison could be tweaked to account for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) using the Big Mac Index.
For the uninitiated, the Big Mac Index is a humorous take by the Economist on PPP, which contends that the PPP adjusted exchange rate can be determined by the price of the Big Mac in any two countries. The general idea is that the Mac being standardized should cost the same anywhere in the world, all things being equal. To get the Big Mac rate we divide the price of the burger in one currency by the price of the burger in other currency. For example, Amit quotes the price of the Big Mac as Rs. 65 in India and $2.50 in New York. So the exchange rate applicable should be 1 USD = INR 26. Using this rate, I have recomputed a table of prices that Amit presented.
The results are pretty interesting. First thing I noticed is that while the Indian prices are cheaper, the stark difference in prices is reduced. I would expect this, because the Indian city used here is Mumbai, definitely one of the more expensive places to live in India. Secondly the prices of some items, namely Levi's Jeans and T-shirt's, are actually more expensive here. I haven't been able to fathom why this should be so, but maybe its because of the enormous premium branded goods command here in some segments.
To conclude this little experiment in burgernomics, I'd say this definitely throws up some food for thought.
If you assume the pricing mechanism of Mcdonalds to be based on perceived value then you argument holds true.
But if Mcdonalds uses the cost plus margin which remains the same across the world, your argument will not be completely correct cause the ingredients cost will be different at different places.
It is an intriguing idea, and maybe a clue in the long term direction of the dollar!!